"It's all about the heartbeat..."

 This time around, each TeachingAuthor is answering the #1 Question

she receives most often from her students and Readers.

I knew mine by heart: What's the one thing about Writing for Children

you wish you knew when you first began?

Ironically, my tried-and-true response also answers the #1 Question I

ask myself when writing my own stories and/or reading the stories of

the writers I teach and coach: Why isn't this manuscript working?!

The answer to both questions?

Every story demands an Emotional Plotline if it's to resound in the

Reader's heart.

Thanks to Aristotle, I knew all about the PHYSICAL Plotline and how 

it structured a story.

The inciting event, the obstacles and struggles, the climax, the

surprise, the resolution.

And I excelled at determining my character's.

Unfortunately, however, after years of toiling on task, I learned 

that wasn't my job.

It's the character's!

Character determines plot. Period.

No more pulling the strings of my character a la Master Geppetto,

guiding actions and re-actions, assigning accompanying emotions

as he seeks to realize his dream, solve his problem, fulfill his need.

No more writing above my character's plotline, unplugged and

disconnected.

I needed to plumb the depths of my character's heart to learn the

WHY of his WHAT, his Or else..., so my story offered an 

EMOTIONAL Plotline.

What misbelief did his hurting heart hold?

What was his bedtime prayer when nighttime came?

I shared several exercises for mining a character's heart in a 2017

TeachingAuthors post, as did Ruth Vander Zee in our January, 

2018 interview and my fellow TA Carmela Martino in her 2017

post.

But, it also turns out, I needed to (bravely) plumb the depths of 

my own heart.

                                        

Marian Dane Bauer's What's My Story? A Young Person's Guide

to Writing Fiction (Clarion, 1992) took my writing to the Next

Level, illuminating a Truth I'd been unwilling to confront.

The writer needs to put his story into the story he's telling.  

That's the only way the Emotional Plotline can be all it must be

to do its job for the Reader.

Mind you: the writer needn't have experienced the actual

inciting incident; he needs only to reconnect with the feelings

that incident provoked, that "I know just how that feels"

sentiment.

In other words, the writer must first connect with the character

if the Reader is to do ths same, if the Reader is to have what

Jane Yolen called the Recognizable Sentiment.

"One heart in hiding, reaching out to one another," Katherine

Paterson wrote of her two characters Jeff Arons and Leslie

Burke in Bridge to Terabithia.

IMHO: this beautiful insight speaks of the character-writer

connection, too, as well as, ultimately, the character-Reader

connection.

            

Fortunately, it wasn't too late in my Writer's Journey to learn

the Why and Wherefore of the Emotional Plotline  (the true

inside story) vs. the Physical Plotline  (the outside actions.)

A story works as it should, as it must, when all three hearts

are inter-connected - the character's, the writer's, the Reader's.

Only then can the story's heart cause another's heart to beat

and burst.

I liken the connection to the three notes of a fine perfume -

the top note, middle note, bottom note - that allow the

singular scent to be known, register and be remembered.

My favorite Coach, Joe Maddon, said it best, though he was

writing about the game of baseball and how it should be

played: "It's all about the heartbeat."

Here's to keeping ours and our Readers' hearts beating!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.

Thanks to Ramona and PLEASURES FROM THE PAGE

for hosting today's Poetry Friday.