 After this friction, narrative and reader need a chance to recover, and we get this in a relaxed description from a safe distance.
Jane Alison, 2- Movement and Flow in Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative  Something fascinating about sentences is that when I'm in the thrall of one, I'm held in its temporal and spatial orbit; it begins and ends when it must, holding and directing me until ready to let me go. I move slowly through tricky syntax; luxurious language makes me linger; or I warily await a final word that will snap the whole into sense.
Jane Alison, 1- Point, Line, Texture in Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative  ...types of letters, lengths of words, friction or fluidity among them, repetition, pauses or liltings within our inner ear signaled by commas or question marks: these are our elementary particles, the visual, auditory, and temporal units with which we first design.
Jane Alison, 1- Point, Line, Texture in Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative  Once you've finished reading, that motionless movement leaves in your mind a numinous shape of the path you traveled. A river, roller coaster, wave.
Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative  But landscapes and atmospheres aren't enough for a story; something has to happen. And it helps the tightness and propulsion of the story enormously if it's the protagonist himself who sets the action going, who takes the initiative. It also encourages our interest in the protagonist to develop into admiration.
Paradise Lost- An Introduction, in Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling, Philip Pullman |
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