Epiphany by Candlelight

The word “epiphany” was never in my vocabulary until fairly recent times. I had heard it, but I only knew it as some high-church religious term that didn’t touch my world. Several years ago I heard it used in a way that made me become more aware of the word in a context of everyday life. Recently I’ve found myself using it occasionally.

The dictionary describes “epiphany” as a “sudden, striking understanding of something.” That fits the way I’ve been understanding it and using it. That’s a comfort. And if that is its meaning, then I had an epiphany last evening—by candlelight.

Now that I’ve finished the myriad writings and rewritings of my first novel, Tangled Strands, it is time to think about the second one. This one has had a root file on my computer for as many as two decades. I’ve had it all plotted and outlined, but based on all I’ve been learning about writing in the last few years, this one had problems that would need to be solved before it went anywhere.

Among the many things I’ve learned about novel writing in the last six years are these:
• You have to have a main character, and with few exceptions male leads need to be written by male authors.
• That main character must want something very badly; otherwise, you don’t have fodder enough for a story, let alone a whole novel.
• Your opening sentence or two must strike your reader between the eyes and make him or her say, “Oh, I’ve got to read more of this!” Today’s readers have no patience to start with flowery descriptions nor the heroine studying herself in a mirror.
• The opening scene must center on the main character, which means that character must appear in those opening sentences.
• Not long after your “opening hook,” you need an “inciting incident.” That is something that kicks the story into action, and it needs to connect to the goal/desire/longing of the lead character.

All this is well and good and I agree with it—but that didn’t make it easy to make decisions about the entirely new opening I needed for my new novel, Tapestries. Just two days ago I made a name change to one of the candidates for main character, and that (don’t ask me how) helped me bond to that character and be content with what I already knew—that she needed to be the lead for the whole tale.

But where and how to start? What could I use for the opening hook and the inciting incident?

Storms yesterday afternoon and evening took away power in our part of the city for eight hours, including the evening. I was happy to spend time reading a top book on novel writing and watching the fading dusk through the double windows. But later in the evening, by the light of a stubby candle that willingly submitted itself to being used up, I got out my little computer and started green-lighting about this story.

I was just past the middle of the page when it came to me—after all these months (even years) of thinking about it. I would start with Catherine preparing for her wedding (but not studying herself in the mirror!). And just like that, I had the inciting incident, too—a meltdown by a four-year-old boy. The need for the meltdown was already in the story; I just needed to recognize where it needed to happen. I had my “sudden, striking understanding,” my epiphany.

So now I am on my way to being able to sit down and write a brand new version of what I hope is going to be an emotional story.

The Bleakest Moment

The other major thing I learned from Angela Hunt was that every plot has to work up to what she called a “bleakest moment.” If you think about the novels you’ve read, I imagine you’ve noticed that events in the story always seem to get worse and worse until something really terrible happens. Well, that is known as the black point, or in Angie’s words, the bleakest moment.

Following this worst-of-the-worst happening in her plot skeleton was the character’s need for help, either from inside or outside herself. It was satisfying to discover I already had that. Then it needed an “epiphany” where the character comes to realize something that will help solve the problem. And that too I already had, so I was encouraged. But as I sat in class and thought about my Tangled Strands story, I was pretty sure I did not have an event traumatic enough to qualify as the bleakest moment.

One of the features of the classes Angie teaches is that at the close, participants have the opportunity to sign up for a fifteen-minute, one-on-one time slot with her to ask specific questions relevant to their story. One of the topics for which I chose to use my time was the bleakest moment issue.

I explained to her that the closest I came to one was the crisis with the baby’s illness and being rushed to the hospital near the end of the story. She asked, “Could you have the baby die?” That was any easy one to answer. “No!” I need that “baby” many years later as the main character in book #4—if, of course, this ever goes that far.

As I thought about it following the conference, I realized the part that needed to be “bleaker” had to be in the relationship between the guy and the gal. The baby crisis actually brings them closer together, another reason it would not work. Something needed to happen that drives them further apart. It didn’t take me long to figure out how I could accomplish that, and I set to work on it. I like what I came up with, but I’d like to find a couple more ways to make it even bleaker.

The biggest challenge was creating that new first chapter, the one where it happens to Sharon. In the original, the first chapter was where her friends find out that she has, without a word to anyone, taken off—skipped out—with a charmer in a yellow convertible. What I had to do was show her in the act of doing the skipping. That took some adjustment in my thinking, and I still had some decisions to make about just how much of that I would cover. Since then, I have rewritten it again, twice.

Of course the logic of starting with the main character makes such perfect sense—now that I know who my main character is supposed to be. The truth is, writing that new first chapter was only a first step. I continue to look for ways to give Sharon more of a focus in the early parts of the story.