Thursday, April 22, 2010

Against Epiphanies

This piece had a lot of good points, and some that one can argue against. As writers, we are put under certain restrictions, and some of those restrictions can really take away from the quality of our writing. Baxter claims that having to always reach an epiphany to satisfy the common reader, can get a bit repetitive. He calls it the "old insight train", which comes "chugging into the station, time after time. I really do agree with a lot of points he is making. A lot of great stories I have read, did not include noticeable climaxes or the writers' insights, and they were still great for different reasons. I think soon enough we will all get tired of the same old point of epiphany in our stories, and look for something new to engage our readers in.
Baxter says that "stories can arrive somewhere interesting without claiming any wisdom or clarification", and I find that very comforting. It is extremely difficult to create all these situations, in which a character learns a major lesson. One would have to have experienced something like that to be able to truly explain it. I think, overall, Baxter makes really good points. I enjoyed reading this much more than the revision piece.

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