The Place For My Writers Notes

Chapter 19 Epiphany Scenes

Working our way through Make a Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld. In the depths of part three, scene types, having looked at first scenes, suspense scenes, dramatic scenes, contemplative scenes, dialogue scenes, action scenes, and flashback scenes, it's now time for an epiphany.

"An epiphany is a moment when awareness or a sharp insight dawns suddenly on your protagonist as a result of events and interactions that have driven him to this moment."

I think of this as the realization. The character suddenly realizes something. This may have a cost to it -- sudden change hurts. They can also be positive turning points, though, when in the midst of despair and darkness, the character sees a ray of hope. Epiphanies are great opportunities for characters to transform themselves.

The epiphany:

• has a cost or renews the character or both
• epiphanies should be driven by plot events and information, not completely unexpected
• the protagonist should gain surprising new insight or break through their own resistance and denial
• epiphanies usually force the protagonist to make choices or changes

Drama, suspense, and sometimes contemplative scenes often lead to epiphanies. Don't overdo them -- people don't have insights every time they turn around.

Rosenfeld suggests the following types of epiphanies. For each one you need to know and show your readers who the character is before the epiphany, what leads them to the change, and what kind of a change happens.

• Removing the Blinders: a character decides to learn what the truth is.
• Realizing a Suppressed Desire: a character makes a major change in their life.
• Accepting Limitations of Oneself or Another: realizing that some things can't be changed
• Claiming Identity: accepting something essential about oneself
• Rude Awakenings: circumstances or people force a character to change the

Opening the epiphany. The key to opening an epiphany is to quickly show the character in conflict, under pressure, unstable. The reader should know as quickly as possible and that change is coming. Epiphany openings often show:

• the protagonist afraid or anxious about the future
• the protagonist under pressure or stress
• the protagonist taking unusual actions or behaving oddly
• the protagonist expressing feelings of conflict about a given event or relationship
• symbolic details of setting or images that hint at an epiphany to come

Pushing the character into epiphany. Once you start the scene, you need to raise the stakes so that the character realizes that important point. Stress, pressure, tension -- you need to push the character into realization. Some common methods of leverage include:

• threat of loss: motivation for awareness -- open your eyes before it's too late
• incontrovertible evidence: hard evidence can sometimes make people pay attention
• injury to a loved one: I did that?
• danger: death or bodily harm can make people face the truth

The moment of epiphany normally belongs right near the end of the scene. Let the character and the reader have a moment to think about what just happened. There are going to be emotional consequences, choices to be made, and debts to pay -- but you can do that in the next scene or scenes. You don't have to do it immediately, and there are advantages to pausing.

Rosenfeld's checklist for epiphany scenes:

• does the epiphany cause the protagonist to change?
• does the scene start with the character anxious about the future or under stress?
• does the scene put pressure and up the ante for the protagonist to make the realization?
• does the scene end soon after the epiphany, leaving the readers enough to chew on?
• does the epiphany change the protagonist's outlook and direction in ways that are demonstrated in future scenes?

Two more kinds of scenes ahead, climactic scenes and the final scene. And then there are a few other scene considerations.

So that's Rosenfeld talking about scenes where the character has a major realization -- an epiphany.

An assignment? I think perhaps the first part is to take a novel or story that you like and look for a scene with an epiphany. These are often the turning point scenes, where a character understands just what they have been doing to themselves and others. It is easy to let these scenes slip into melodramatic interior monologues, drenched in pathos. But you want to find a good epiphany scene, one that you like, and then take it apart. How did the writer lay the foundations at the beginning of the scene? How did they put the pressure on the character in the scene that leads up to them finally understanding? How do they portray that moment of insight, that realization that the only person responsible for all of their problems is themselves? And what happens to close out the scene?

The second part is to put together an epiphany scene for your own writing. What does the character need to learn? How will the character break through their own lack of understanding and resistance and take that look? Now, structure the whole scene, from the initial moments of uneasiness through the growing pressures to the moment of understanding, when the world suddenly becomes clear.

Write?
write!

original posting: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 12:13:00 -0500

Let's take a look at some thoughts from Writing As a Lifelong Skill by Sanford Kaye, ISBN 0-534-22218-8

Up to Now: Your Writing History

And in case you would like some concrete questions to help you along, from page 15:

• How did you learn to write in the first place?  Who taught you?  What kind of response did you get to your earliest efforts?  How did you feel about writing then?  Does that differ from the way you feel about writing now?
• What has been your best writing experience?
• What has been your worst?  Why was it so bad?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses now?
• What do you hope to accomplish with your writing?

So, do you have your definition, your attitudes, and your history written out?  At least some key points?  Why not?  You don't have to show them to anyone, but you might find it interesting to explore...

Original posting: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 07:13:39 -0500

Turning Points: Or Write What You Know?

Think back over the last year in your life.  Were there turning points in your life?  Places where two roads diverged, and you took the one less traveled?  Were there lessons that you learned, decisions that cost you, changes that affect you and yours?

This year, of course, we have the events of Sept. 11, 2001, which have shaken many, and changed the direction of the world.  But each of us also has a myriad of smaller changes and shifts in our lives.

Make a list of ten turning points, decisions, lessons that you learned this last year.  If the last year isn't enough, feel free to stretch further back into your life.  (Bonus exercise: do one list for your youth, one for your early career, and one for events of the last year  or whatever kind of stages you would like to separate your life into.  Compare them, and consider what kind of lessons you would draw from how you have gone through your life that you would like to tell someone else about.)

Now, pick one of those turning points from your list.  Either as autobiographical sketch or as lightly or heavily disguised fiction, or perhaps as poetic twist, write about that turning point.  Show us how you arrived at that point, what influenced you to make the choices you made, and what the results are.

Heck, if it works for you, write it up as a soap opera episode!

original posting: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 21:13:18 -0400

A bit incoherent, but perhaps you'll find some echoes...

"Religious man experiences two kinds of time -- profane and sacred.  The one is an evanescent duration, the other a 'succession of eternities,' periodically recoverable during the festivals that made up the sacred calendar.  The liturgical time of the calendar flows in a closed circle; it is the cosmic time of the year, sanctified by the works of the gods."  Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, quoted in Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox

"But this moment and the meaning of this moment -- fact and interpretation -- are not separable.  Human beings inevitably are philosophical animals.  We interpret, discover, and create meaning in the act of perception.  We think with our senses, see with our hearts, and feel with our brains.  We use images, analogies, and metaphors to understand the world around us and the meaning of life as a whole.  We live within a framework that gives meaning to our experience.  The philosophical context within which we live determines the way we perceive the content of our days." Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox

I think Mircea missed something, in describing sacred time as always a circle.  For indeed, disasters and deaths and other events often seem to "kick" us into the sacred time, the unending now that focuses our lives and attentions and emotions, putting our being into the fires where they forge a new reality.

September 11, 2001.  That date will ring for all of us living now, and those images will be a part of our lives.  And for many of us that moment, that sacred time that started that day, has not ended!

How many of you, turning on the TV, or talking with a friend, suddenly have tears, or reach out and embrace?  It may be something as seemingly trivial as a burly fireman talking about finding a raggedy ann doll, and having to stop and blink away his tears, and suddenly you are crying with him, or something more profound, those moments when you learn that... well, for me, that the husband of a past co-worker was somewhere in that catastrophe.  That emotional contact seems to me to be a hallmark of these sacred times.

Or reading something that makes you reach out and hug your wife, and look at the blue sky, and vibrate with aliveness!

(Or the mundane realization that you haven't even looked at mail since that day, and the bills and junkmail continue to pile up.  Walk in the door and turn on CNN.  Watch, absorb, hold hands with my wife, talk in disjointed sequences, try to pick up the scattered threads of work.  CNN, rumors and news, what have you heard today?  That setting aside of the ordinary priorities also seems a hallmark of these sacred times, when shock and the cycle of emotional reaction take us.)

Take a few minutes.  Capture your own timeline of these days.

As some have done, write down where you were that day, how you heard the news.

Or write down one of the stories that touched you, one of the many incredible outreaches going on here and everywhere.

Think about a child, five years from now, ten years, or more, asking what it meant to live through this time.  And think of the details, the sharpness and gracenotes, that you would like to share with that child.  Do you remember seeing grey snowflakes, and then realizing that they were walls and windows, shattered, like an obscene snowdrift when viewed from above?  Or maybe listening to the blind man who walked down from the 78th floor?

Whatever, get it down now.

And bask in the time that we have.  Touched by the sacred as humanity reaches out to itself, grounded in the profane actions that initiated the Great Catastrophe (with thanks to Alison for the label).

original posting: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 23:00:00 -0500

(Get ready with the spit...he's turning again :-)

Friends, Enemies, And Other Travelers

That turning point is becoming a pretty significant writing resource for you, isn't it?  First it was important to you, then you explored some of the other ways that it might have turned out, and looked at the background and future of it.  I think there's one more area you might want to look at while you're exploring your turning point.

I'm sure that there were other people involved with your turning point.  Some may have been friends, some not so friendly, and others related in various ways.  While you can't do this with the real events, in writing you can certainly focus the people, add a significant person, get rid of some extras, make the greedy boss just a little bit more evidently eeeevil, have the waitress drop just the right words to crystallize your thinking, or whatever.

So take a few minutes and think about the characters around your turning point.  Do you need a "wise man" to guide you?  How about a comic foil to draw out the irony of the situation?

It's always fun to consider writing up the scene from one or more of their viewpoints, too.  What happens when you look at your skiing accident from your daughter's viewpoint?  Who is the best person to tell the story of this turning point so that your audience feels the passion, hears the excitement, sees the glory and the terror?

Okay?  Explore those turning points, there's writing in there!

"I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers."  Walt Whitman

a butterfly did dream... tink