RAW SEX

Got your attention, didn't I?

And that is one half of the Third Key of writing a classic.

The other half is keeping it.

Duh! You already knew that, didn't you? But how to do it is the real secret.

And that secret is :

YIN YANG

That's the answer. Like most short answers, it becomes larger, deeper, and more complex the more you look at it.

Yin Yang is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world,

and how they give rise to each other in turn.

{Collective scratching of the head with a look of having bitten into a lemon.}

Let's see if I can weave some clarity into that fog :

1) We get attention by spinning life around to its opposite :

A.) Theodore Roethke begins a poem :

Once upon a tree
I came upon a time.

{Got your attention didn't it?}

B.) Cliche becomes novel :

The movie, THE STRANGERS, has four young psycho's picking an isolated country home at random where they terrorize, torture, finally killing the young couple living there.

Now, make it novel. Same four psychopaths choose another isolated home at random. Much to their horror and our delight, the one occupant happens to be Hannibal Lector.

We rub our hands in anticipation of clever poetic justice being meted out with ingenuity and dark humor.

2.) We get attention by placing opposites next to one another as in this poem by Hugh MacDiarmid which begins :

"I remember how, long ago, I found
Crystals like blood in a broken stone."

{Shades of getting blood from a turnip, right?}

3.) We blow fresh air into a reader's mind by leaping from cliche to jarring opposing images.

A.) Cliche :

She dresses sloppily. The sea was rough. She was really pleased.

B.) Yin Yang :

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.

The sea was harsher than granite.

She was as thrilled as a dog with two tails.

{Good news for NaNo writers : see how the better sentence is also longer?

Bad news : The worse sentence was fast to the mind. The better took time to mull over mentally the sound and feel of the words.

Writing Wisdom : quanity may make quotas but quality wins the heart of agent and reader alike.}

4.) The difference between boring and brilliant is a right turn on dead.

How many chic flicks we guys have groaned through because of dead-end cliches?

It needn't have been. Take this scenario for my imaginary chic flick, MASKS.

{Remember good stories are that way because they reflect truth ... but through a mirror darkly.}

Think of any number of prospective in-laws meet the would-be new son in the family. Try not to groan. MEET THE PARENTS spawned oh, so many tepid echoes.

How many sloppy buildings have you seen just thrown up to follow a hot trend in housing?

Think of the difference between Architecture versus interior decoration. That is the difference between outlining and plotting.

But back to my scenario of the chick flick, MASKS :

A New York captain in the fire department has contempt for the young man who's asked his daughter to marry him. He is a soft-spoken librarian.

To shame the young man into backing off, the captain invites the young man to spend the day at the fire station to be hazed by the rest of the company. The boy surprises the captain and agrees.

It is September 11th, 2001. And as both mother and daughter anguish at home over the men they love, the young man proves you don't have to swagger to be a hero.

5.) Yin Yang in plotting :

A.) The impact of MASKS would be neutered if the finace were an ex-Navy Seal. It takes sparks flying from two opposing lifestyles and mindsets to make for dramatic tension.

B.) Picture the symbol of Yin Yang -- see how there is a small circle of the opposing color in the center of the black and the white?

The same must be true for the hero and the villain in your novel.

Think CHARACTER versus REAL PERSON :

There must be something to be feared or mistrusted in your hero.
There equally must be something admirable within your villain.

The two must be alike in some manner so that the hero, or even the villain, realizes how easily he could become a carbon copy of the dreaded opponent.

C.) Perhaps the hero even loses. But in losing, he has "infected" the villain. The antagonist realizes he is no longer the same as he was. He has grown to be somewhat like the hero --

maybe even taking up the hero's cause for his own --

but in his own dark way.

Life is always surprising.

Sometimes the villain had a hero inside him all along. I haven't seen the cartoon MEGAMIND, but the trailer leads me to believe this could be the case with that story.

You will have a winning story that will attract readers if ...

1) You give them dialogue witty and funny and true enough that they will be quoting it to their friends.

2) You paint your setting with such magic and depth, it haunts them long after they put down your book.

3) And you twist the cliche on its ear, surprising the reader and making them cheer for the underdog --

and maybe wiping away a tear when the price tag for victory is steep or when, at the last minute, cliche becomes character, winning the day for the bruised hero.

(I vote for the latter. People read a happy ending book over and over, while only suggesting the tear-stained ending one to friends. And the happy ending novel makes for a better gift ... and movie -- studio's want repeat customers, too.)
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