For earlier posts, start with the Introduction. Denouement is not a common word in everyday conversation, so for a long time I didn’t know how to pronounce it. It’s day-noo-MAHN (go easy on the final n). It’s the resolution, or (according to my dictionary), “the events following the climax of a drama or novel in [...]
Part One. Part Two. In the second essay of The Abolition of Man, “The Way,” Lewis showed that humanity seemed to have only one code of ethics, one set of standards for determining what’s good. Though it goes by many names, western tradition calls it Natural Law. Lewis tagged it the Tao, as a way of [...]
Climax? Isn’t it a little early for that? Most of us have the idea that the climax is a high point of the story (as the word would seem to suggest), after which nothing is left but tying up loose ends. But there’s another way to understand climax, in literary terms: that is, it’s the [...]
Previous Posts: Introduction Part One: Setup Almost all the main characters have been introduced and the potential conflicts are in place. Now development: that phase of a novel that builds tension and raises the stakes. All the major plot elements will be rounded up and herded in one direction, although the reader should feel that [...]
In the summer of 1945, George Orwell wrote a review for the Manchester Evening News, beginning, “On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them.” That said, he was ready to give a grudging thumbs-up to C. S. Lewis’s latest, which completed the cycle begun with Out of the Silent Planet [...]
Part One. Part Two. What’s the problem with a glut of grim, futurist fiction on the YA bookshelves? Maybe nothing. Youth is resilient, and most young people are smart enough to know that fiction is fiction. If their reading is balanced, and they get out in the fresh air often enough, no harm done. Too [...]
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